We have had this sweetest little kindergartener in our home for the last few months. We have enjoyed our time with her and I’ve been working to get to know the rest of her family as well as she has several other siblings in foster care in different homes. A few months ago I read this article Love Wins by the mommy blogger at The Diaper Diaries. I was so blessed and challenged in reading about empathy for our kids’ birth families. She shares that the hardest part about foster care isn’t loving the babies, but instead loving their moms.

Today I had an opportunity to love well. To encourage this mama to do her best. That her daughter is special, smart, beautiful, sweet, cared for, loved. To openly communicate with her, good and bad. But most of all, to see her as the woman God created her has, beautiful and fully loved by God. One of the other foster parents pulled me aside afterwards, “I can’t believe you’re that nice to Mom!”

But God. Yet again, he challenges me and changes my heart. I seek to be more like Him. Help me, Lord, to love these broken families and give us opportunities to support them in their journey and teach them a better story.

I have found that having compassion for the bio families is a vital part of healing for the kids. These adults were once kids and probably had similar or worse experiences themselves. It’s a sad situation when people grow up without ever understanding what it is to love or be loved.